


You might as well enjoy the view while you burn

by CamilleDuDemon



Category: Avenged Sevenfold
Genre: Brooding, Light Angst, M/M, One-Sided Relationship, Unrequited Crush, Unrequited Love, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-09-23 15:27:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20342383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CamilleDuDemon/pseuds/CamilleDuDemon
Summary: Whenever he’s so flirty, it feels like it’s 2004 again. You burn, that’s it, you burn silently as you’ve been burning for over a decade now. He winks – or, for what it’s worth, he touches you even in the most innocent, comradely way – and you’re back to the drawing board, you’re twenty-something and you burn for him.Back at being that guy. Back at when you fantasized about his tight abs and soft skin, his toes curling while you were giving him the best blowjob of his own goddamn life.Needless to say you never really had the nerve of merely asking him, if he wanted one.





	You might as well enjoy the view while you burn

“Hey. Where’s the opener?”, Brian asks, peeking from your backdoor letting the shouts of your kids in. They must be having a whole lot of fun by the pool, judging by the mess they’re making.

“Sorry, what? I must have blacked out for a sec.”

He lets out a lovely, hearty giggle, while taking the bottle cap between his teeth and pulling, mimicking a bottle opener. You both used to open your beers this spartan way, once, but with your forties approaching you’ve started to pay attention to all those small things that could damage your gums to the point of leaving you toothless. Periodontitis, it’s called, but frankly you don’t give a shit now, not with Brian giggling and oozing chlorine-saturated water on your kitchen floor.

As if you could possibly give a damn about the floor, though.

“Ah, yeah, of course. Here”, you say, handing him the bottle opener, the one you’ve brought as a souvenir from your trip to Dublin. He winks at you – it’s his personal way to say “thanks” without wasting time&breath – and you feel your knees melting like butter in the warmest Californian heat.

Damn him.

Damn everything.

Whenever he’s so flirty, it feels like it’s 2004 again. _You burn, _that’s it, you burn silently as you’ve been burning for over a decade now. He winks – or, for what it’s worth, he touches you even in the most innocent, comradely way – and you’re back to the drawing board, _you’re twenty-something and you burn for him._

Back at being _that guy. _Back at when you fantasized about his tight abs and soft skin, his toes curling while you were giving him the best blowjob of his own goddamn life.

Needless to say you never really had the nerve of merely asking him, if he wanted one. Now that you’re a grown ass man leaning against his own kitchen counter in his own house, you’re starting to think his answer would have been affirmative. Maybe, he would have shrugged and he would have said “why not, Zee”, and he would have let you bask in the glorious magnificence of his nakedness, of his erection – which, again, you have never seen, but you like to think about every now and then, especially when you’re alone in the shower and you need to rub off some steam.

That’s what being _that guy _means: it means that you would have accepted anything, anything if it came from him. Every single crumb he has left behind for you, you’ve eagerly eaten, no matter how small. The heat of his back against yours, on stage; the occasional flattering niceties about your hair; his fingers rubbing soothing circles on the small of your back when you felt your muscles tie into painful knots.

_Every single damned crumble you ate. Every drop you drank. In vain._

In hindsight, it’s all your fault and yours alone. You have never been vocal about your desires, about your feelings, so this is where your fucking fear of messing everything up has led to: you’re both married with kids. The problem is, _you’re not married to each other._

Which sucks. Utterly.

“You’re brooding.”

The sound of his voice coming from far too close to your ear to make you feel comfortable with your own skin startles you. You haven’t heard him slam the door open, nor paddle barefoot into your kitchen, with a damp towel around his hips and his hair sticking out like a freaking mess.

“Shit man. You scared the hell outta me!”

He lets out another husky laugh and you allow yourself just to enjoy the view. It may be true that he’s softening with age and beer, yet---yet he’s still handsome. The most beautiful man you’ve ever met. _The man, actually. _He’s the one and only. He has always been.

The point is---it’s just that when Brian is there, anything else isn’t anymore. There’s just you and your teenage-like _heartache_, a word you have always thought to belong to cheesy romcoms and bad novels for bored preteens and housewives. Still, it’s there, undoubtedly. It hurts and burns even after all these years.

Brian spots the tattered packet of your Marlboros and he serves himself one, then he waits for your permission to light it, brow creased. You kindly nod and follow him, even though you’re not supposed to smoke inside with the kids around and the expensive curtains that can get smelly and nicotine-stained.

“Thought you couldn’t smoke inside”, he points out, cig between his teeth. You shrug.

“Bending the rules, man. Open rebellion.”

“Wow, you’ve got balls!”

You can’t help but think something that sounds like _show me yours and I’ll show you mine_, but it feels just too inappropriate, too out of context, too everything, and you just flush the thought down an imaginary, giant toilet, wishing you could do the same for the feelings you still feel for him.

“So what?”, you cautiously ask, leaning further into the counter in a pathetic attempt at masculine bravado which fails because of his goddamn smile: it catches you off-guard and you barely manage to keep yourself steadily on your own two feet before making a fool of yourself.

“So what what? You were brooding, I came to the rescue.”

“I wasn’t brooding”, you protest. He flashes you an eloquent gaze.

“Yeah, sure, you weren’t. but if you were…”

“Which is a blatant lie…”

“Yup, I get it, I was just guessing. As I was saying, if you were brooding and you weren’t, of course, you know you can count on me, right?”

He smiles at you again. Fondly, kindly, so genuinely you’re on the verge of doing the craziest shit you can do and confess him everything, lay it at his feet, wait for the kick and whatnot, but luckily you’re still lucid enough not to. You take a mental note: you should thank God for your common sense, sooner or later.

“I know”, you say, and while you smile back at him, he gives you a friendly pat on the shoulder.

So, here’s the deal, between you and yourself, for another year, another century, another endless forever; _whatever is that you’re feeling right now or you have felt in the past years, you bury it. Greater good business and blah, blah, blah. _

It’s about doing the right thing and shit---again.

“Thanks man”, you whisper. “The same goes for you.”

Brian flashes you one of his infamous cocky grins.

“I never sulk. You know me.”

Yeah, you think, you know him. You’ve spent so much time by his side there’s no chance for you to get his signals wrong or equivocate his gestures.

_Sometimes, though, you just wish you didn’t._


End file.
